Chapter 2: Intervention
The roof was a bone-cold slab under a bruised, twilight sky. Wind snatched at Katsuki’s hair, whipping it into a frantic blond corona. He braced his palms on the safety railing, the metal biting into his skin, and stared down at the city until his eyes burned. He could still smell the ghost of the explosion, the burnt wiring, his own shame.
The heavy door clanged open behind him. He didn’t turn.
“We need to talk, man.” Kirishima’s voice was stripped of its usual easygoing tone. It was flat, firm. The sound of a friend who’d hit his limit.
“Fuck off,” Katsuki said, the wind stealing the heat from the words.
“No.” Kirishima’s boots scraped on the gravelly concrete as he moved to stand beside him, not looking at him, looking out at the same view. “You blew up agency property. Over a picture. You’ve been a walking grenade with the pin pulled for weeks. And it’s about him. It’s always about him. So what the hell is going on with you?”
Katsuki’s jaw ached from clenching. “Nothing’s going on.”
“Bullshit. I saw the mark. I saw you staring. That’s not nothing. That’s something messy and loud and it’s screwing with your head, which means it’s gonna screw with your work, which means it’s gonna screw with my work when I’ve got your back in a fight and you’re distracted by whatever the hell this… thing is with Deku.”
The name was a spark in a gas-filled room. Katsuki pushed off the railing, turning to face him. “There is no thing.”
“Then what do you call it?” Kirishima shot back, finally looking at him, red eyes sharp. “You biting him? Him letting you? You stalking his interviews and detonating monitors? That’s a thing, Bakugou. A really fucking confusing thing. Are you fucking him? Is that it? Is this some hate-sex rivalry crap that’s gotten out of hand?”
The crude, direct question hung in the air between them. It demanded a simple, crude answer. Yes or no. Katsuki could have said yes. He could have owned it, reduced it to something base and physical, something he could pretend to control.
But the lie wouldn’t form. The truth was a tangled, seething mass in his gut that had no name. It wasn’t just sex. It was the way Izuku looked at him after, like Katsuki had given him a gift instead of taken something. It was the way his own chest felt hollow and frantic when Izuku wasn’t in the room. It was the terror of that mark being seen, not because it was a secret, but because it was proof. Proof that Izuku Midoriya could make Katsuki Bakugou lose his mind.
The silence stretched, damning.
Kirishima’s shoulders slumped. “Just tell me, bro. I’m not gonna judge. I just need to understand what I’m dealing with here. Why?”
The ‘why’ was the grenade. Katsuki’s control, already in tatters, vaporized.
“I DON’T FEEL ANYTHING FOR THAT DAMN NERD!” The roar tore from his throat, raw and deafening even against the wind. He took a step forward, fists smoking at his sides. “HE’S A PAIN IN MY ASS! A PEBBLE IN MY GODDAMN SHOE! HE CAN FUCKING DIE FOR ALL I CARE! IT MEANS NOTHING! IT’S NOTHING!”
He was screaming it to the sky, to Kirishima, to the ghost of the boy on the stairs. He needed to believe the echo. He needed the words to carve the feeling out of him.
The metallic click of the rooftop door closing was soft, but it cut through the aftermath of his shout like a blade.
Both of them froze.
Katsuki’s head snapped toward the sound.
Izuku stood there, just outside the door, his figure backlit by the stairwell light. The expression on his face wasn’t one of anger, or hurt. It was wiped clean. Blank. Hollow. At his feet, a dark pool spread on the concrete, seeping from two smashed paper cups. The cardboard sleeves were still held loosely in his other hand.
Two cups.
One for Katsuki. One for himself.
He’d come looking. After everything on the stairs, after the vitriol, he’d still come looking, with coffee, to talk. To maybe fix what Katsuki kept breaking.
Katsuki’s breath vanished. His heart hammered against his ribs, a trapped, furious bird. He saw Izuku’s eyes, green and depthless, meet his for one fractured second. He saw the exact moment the blankness solidified into something unreadable and final.
Without a word, Izuku turned. The door opened and closed again. He was gone.
The wind howled across the empty roof.
Kirishima let out a long, pained breath. “Oh, man.”
Katsuki couldn’t move. The spilled coffee looked like old blood. The words he’d just screamed—he can fucking die for all I care—echoed in the new, cavernous silence inside him, monstrous and stupid. A lie so vast it had its own gravity.
He turned and walked past Kirishima, shoving the door open so hard it slammed against the wall with a resonant bang. He took the stairs down, not running, his movements precise and lethal. He didn’t go home. He paced the streets, an engine with no off switch, until the sky was fully black and the city’s neon glow painted the sidewalks in garish colors.
His feet carried him to a familiar apartment block. His knuckles rapped on a familiar door, not a request, a demand.
It opened. Izuku stood there, changed into a soft t-shirt and sweats, his hair damp. His face was still that terrifying calm. He didn’t speak. He just stepped back, letting Katsuki in.
The apartment was quiet, warm. It smelled of laundry and green tea. Normal. Peaceful. Everything Katsuki was not.
“What.” Izuku’s voice was flat.
Katsuki had no plan. No words that weren’t explosives. The chaos inside him had only one outlet. He crossed the space in two strides, crowding Izuku back against the closed door. He didn’t kiss him. He looked at him, his red eyes scanning that calm, waiting face, looking for the crack, the hurt, the anger—anything.
“You heard,” Katsuki said, not a question.
“Yes.”
“Then why’d you let me in?”
Izuku’s gaze didn’t waver. “I don’t know.”
It was the only honest thing either of them had said all night. Katsuki crushed their mouths together. It wasn’t a kiss; it was a collision, a punishment. For Izuku. For himself. For the two cups of coffee on the roof. Izuku yielded for a second, then fought back, his hands fisting in Katsuki’s shirt, biting at his lip until he tasted copper. It was a violent, silent agreement. This was the only language they had left.
Katsuki spun him around, pressing his chest against the door. He shoved the sweats and briefs down Izuku’s thighs in one rough jerk, the fabric catching at his knees. He didn’t prep him, didn’t wait. He unzipped his own jeans, freed his cock, hard and aching, and spat into his palm, slicking himself once, twice.
“Kacchan—” Izuku’s voice was a strained gasp, his forehead pressed to the cool wood.
“Shut up,” Katsuki snarled, the words hot against the shell of his ear. He positioned himself, the head of his cock pressing against Izuku’s entrance, tight and unprepared. “You want to talk? This is talking.”
He pushed in.
Izuku cried out, a sharp, bitten-off sound of pain. His body clenched, a vice of heat and resistance, forcing Katsuki to shove harder, to work himself in with brutal, shallow thrusts until he was fully sheathed, buried to the hilt. They both panted, suspended in that white-hot moment of violation and communion.
“It means nothing,” Katsuki growled, hips pulling back and slamming forward, setting a punishing rhythm. The door rattled in its frame. “You hear me? Nothing.”
Izuku’s hands splayed against the door, knuckles white. He pushed back, meeting each thrust with a force that drove the breath from Katsuki’s lungs. “Then… then why are you here?” he gritted out, voice shaking with the impact.
Katsuki couldn’t answer. He hooked an arm around Izuku’s waist, hauling him even closer, driving deeper. The slap of skin, the ragged gasps, the creak of the door—it was a furious, ugly music. He bent, sinking his teeth into the same patch of skin on Izuku’s shoulder, over the fading bruise, claiming it anew. Izuku shuddered, a full-body convulsion, and a broken, pleasured sound tore from his throat.
That sound undid Katsuki. His control splintered. His thrusts lost their rhythm, becoming frantic, desperate. He fucked into him with a raw, blind need to erase the words from the rooftop, to brand the lie onto both their skins. To prove that this, this filthy, perfect heat, this feeling of Izuku tight around him, taking him, wanting him even now, was all that existed.
“Come on,” he rasped, his hand sliding around Izuku’s hip, finding him hard and leaking. He fisted his cock, stroking in time with his own brutal drives. “Come for me, you liar. Show me it means nothing.”
Izuku’s composure shattered. A ragged sob escaped him as he came, hot stripes painting the door, his body clamping down on Katsuki’s in rhythmic, milking pulses. The intense, clenching heat was the trigger. Katsuki buried his face in Izuku’s neck, a guttural roar muffled against his skin as he emptied himself deep inside, thrusts slowing to a final, grinding roll of his hips.
Silence, broken only by their harsh, struggling breaths. The air was thick with the smell of sex, sweat, and pain.
Katsuki slowly pulled out. He tucked himself away, zipped up. Izuku stayed against the door, forehead still resting on the wood, pants around his knees, exposed and spent.
The words lingered. Nothing. It means nothing.
Katsuki looked at the tense line of Izuku’s back, at the fresh bite mark already darkening. He looked at his own trembling hands. The hollowness in his chest was gone, replaced by a different, heavier void.
He turned and left, closing the apartment door softly behind him. The click of the latch was the loudest sound he’d ever heard.
Alone in the hallway, he leaned his back against the wall, sliding down until he sat on the floor. He dropped his head into his hands. The ghost of Izuku’s heat still clung to him. The taste of his skin was still in his mouth.
He can fucking die for all I care.
The lie tasted like ash. And for the first time, kneeling on the hard floor outside Izuku Midoriya’s apartment, Katsuki Bakugou was terrified that the person it was killing was himself.
The cold from the linoleum seeped through his jeans, a dull contrast to the feverish heat still simmering under his skin. Every ragged breath Katsuki drew tasted like Izuku—like sweat, salt, and that faint, clean scent that was uniquely his. He could hear the faint, muffled sounds of movement from inside the apartment, the shift of a body, the soft click of a light switch.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eye sockets until colors burst in the darkness. Go back. Fix it. Say something. The commands screamed in his skull, but his body was a leaden weight, anchored by a lifetime of never, ever being wrong.
Inside, Izuku slid down the length of the door until he sat in the puddle of his own clothes. The tremors started in his thighs, a fine, uncontrollable shaking that spread up his spine and rattled his teeth. He was half-naked and shaking from pleasure and despair.
He left… he just left.
Of course he did. What did he expect? Aftercare? Right?
A wet, choked sound escaped him, something between a laugh and a sob. He touched the fresh, throbbing bite on his neck and hissed. Another new physical reminder of whatever they had—or didn’t have—going on. The skin was raised, tender, a perfect imprint of Katsuki’s teeth. His chest ached, a hollow, bruised feeling behind his sternum. His hips hurt, a deep, hot ache where he’d been taken with such brutal efficiency.
He leaned his head back against the door, the wood cool on his scalp. He could almost feel the presence on the other side. A phantom heat. A silence that was louder than any explosion.
On the other side, just a few paces away, Bakugou sat curled into himself, fighting the need to go back. His forehead nearly touched his knees. The image of Izuku, bent over and trembling against the door, was seared onto the backs of his eyelids. Doing that would mean admitting he was wrong. It would mean giving a name to the frantic, awful thing clawing at his ribs. It would mean showing a weakness he didn't know how to survive.
He stood up abruptly, his joints protesting. The movement was too loud in the silent hallway. He didn’t look back. He walked away, each step a deliberate act of violence against the part of him that wanted to turn around. The part that was already composing a list of excuses: I forgot my… I need to tell you about the mission… your form was shit…
He hit the street, the cool night air doing nothing to cleanse him. His phone buzzed in his pocket. Kirishima. He ignored it. He walked until his legs burned, until the memory of Izuku’s tight, yielding heat was just a ghost in his muscles, a persistent and haunting echo.